All That Mental Bullshit

Last week, I published a short story on Amazon.

It’s called “The Ticket,” and it’s a end-of-the-world-what-would-you-do-if kind of story.

I’ve had it bouncing around in my head for years, though I initially envisioned it as a screenplay. The opening scene was a bunch of military guys busting into a base and attempting to steal a RLV (reusable launch vehicle) to get off the Earth. Lots of gunplay and action. I still think if it ever gets picked up, that scene has to be there (along with a whole character arc for Anya).

It’s maybe the only story idea I’ve ever had where the ending came to me before the beginning. I’d never tried to write something knowing where I was going before, and the results were … weird? I’m happy with how it turned out, but it did not turn out how I envisioned. These things have a mind of their own.

But the point of the exercise was to put something out there. Full disclosure, I have a couple degrees in mass communications and have been making a living off my writing since 1996. That kind of writing means little to me, however. Since I was in sixth grade, I wanted to be a novelist. One might think that with that goal in mind, all my decisions would’ve been made to line up.

Nope. Not even a little. I don’t think I thought it was realistic, financially, so I didn’t really pursue it. Grabbed my minor in creative writing, sure. Wrote a serial fiction series for the college newspaper. Submitted a short story to one adult fiction contest (placed “honorable mention”). And that’s been it.

Somewhere along the way I became afraid to try. I’m horrified to fail at it. It’s become such a core part of my identity, that I’m not sure who I’d be if I found out I wasn’t really good enough. Better to not try at all. You know, all that mental bullshit.

Thing is … I know deep down it’s what I’m supposed to be doing. The fiction writing thing. I’ve only ever felt content when that was what I was doing with the majority of my time; that’s happened twice. Am I good enough to make a living? Who knows.

What I know now is that I have to try. I have to focus my efforts to that goal, and it’s something I’m unaccustomed to doing. I don’t know how. I lack the self-discipline. annnd there’s more mental bullshit. I will overcome.

It was horrifying to stick a mostly unedited short story out on Amazon. I’m still scared to put a link to it on Reddit (where a little self-marketing could be an uptick in sales). Anxiety is a bitch.

Right now, I’m writing this blog to write something, a mechanism to get the fingers typing and the routine built into the day. I’ve spent one month and change writing and publishing and dealing with that first story. It’s time to start the next one. I just have to figure out what that is. Oh, and I’m going to go ahead and compile my giant stack of random short stories I’ve written over the last 20 years into a “book,” and upload that thing, too. What the hell, right?

Just don’t ask me to read my reviews